"The Vatican had a very bad war. Pope Pious XII has gone down in history as ‘Hitler’s Pope’, a man of deafening silences who made no public protests whatsoever at Nazi atrocities, especially Auschwitz - or even at the rounding up of Italian Jews. Add to that the assistance some parts of the Vatican gave in the post-war chaos to Nazis on the run and the record looks damning. So it is a surprise for most of us to learn of a Scarlet Pimpernel-esque Vatican priest who did all in his power to help escaped prisoners of war from the Allied forces survive by hiding them in and around German-occupied Rome. He was Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, a tall (6ft 2ins) humourous-looking Irish man from Kerry. He had tousled hair that stood up like a brush’s bristles, eyes which twinkled through his thin-rimmed glasses and a fixed cherubic smile. Almost Father Ted material." The heroic Vatican priest who ran rings round a Nazi colonel | Mail Online
At least two German Roman Catholic clergy did publicly protest. Bishop Clement Galens denounced Nazi atrocities from the pulpit. Father Max Josef Metzger was executed as an outspoken pacifist.
I’ll resubmit this superb December of 1940, six page Time magazine article on the treatment of the Christian Church (both Catholic and Protestant) in Nazi Germany in late 1940. There were even more pastors and priests than this early story tells of course, as the war dragged on. The Title; German Martyrs. "Not you, Herr Hitler, but God is my Führer. These defiant words of Pastor Martin Niemoller were echoed by millions of Germans. And Hitler raged: "It is Niemoller or I." (bold mine) Goto: Religion: German Martyrs - TIME
This is another example of the many unknown heroes of ww2. It's unfortunate such people will never be known but only to the lives they have saved. here's a litle more on Hugh O'Flaherty, Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty: Hero of the Vatican
